Meryl and I find Jesus in scotland, A dorky skinny man riverdances in a pub and we drink whisky in Glen Ord...

Hey everyone
It has been a fun last few days.  Meryl and I took the train to Inverness, Scotland in the Highlands.  Our B&B was located on the river Ness which flows from Loch Ness.  The river was beautiful and many old Scottish fishermen were about fishing for Salmon with fly rods.  A closer look showed that the fly rods were over 15 feet long and the could easily cast the entire width of the river.  Meryl and I were able to rent a flyrod and buy a few flies for a small fortune.  We were able to make a few fish rise, but meryl as usual brought home the prize fish!
We took a local bus to the Glen Ord Distillery and sampled the 12 year old Singleton Scotch.  The tour was awesome.  I was able to stick my head into a big fermenting vat and smell the rumbling malted barley.  The yeast shot up my nose and i felt like i was hit by an olympic boxer ( if you have never had a nose ful of active yeast i highly reccommend it...similar to a nostril full of wasabi but with a citrus-like freshness) Kablam!  We tasted the whisky and i remembered that meryl has a not-so-fond-of/ extreme indifference to the stuff.  A local whisky bar recommend i 'start her on MacCallen 10 year old'!
We sipped cask ale and Guinness at a local music club and enjoyed some local culture.  This skinny fellow danced his heart out.
WE FOUND JESUS...He was at a golf course! We passed a church on the walk to the distillery with this poster...
Now we are leaving Scotland for London to watch Sam's race (on sunday).  We have a cowbell, a Montana Flag and we've been resting our voices so we can yell at peak decibel levels!
GO SAM!!!!

F&M

Hey All!
Meryl and I have had a whirlwind of Scotland so far.  This is just a quick post to inform our loyal readers that we will be posting some sweet pictures soon and a more detailed update.  On Wednesday we flew from Missoula to Minneapolis to London.  Took the tube from the airport to the train station and hopped on a train to Edinbourgh Scotland. There are multiple festivals going on here in Edinbourgh and the city is hopping.  We ate some tasty Nepalese/indian food and then had Scotch and Guiness at a bar and walked around the cobbled streets lined by old architecture and castles. 
In a few hours we will be taking the train to the Scottish highlands near the river Ness for two days.
more to come,

Cheers,
F

Lochsa Fire Video 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64LmqhZJt54

2011 Lochsa Fire Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64LmqhZJt54&feature=feedu

Our Last Reykjavic day

Greenland from the air
"The Dragon" Drakir

Meryl and Tererir "Blood"

Sheep's head with a sweatband...
Reykjavic and Fjord

We had a fast paced last day in Iceland. The Icelandic Horse is pure bred, no outside horse has been interbred with an Icelandic Horse since the Vikings arrived and brought horses from Scandinavia. They are small, shaggy and super playful. They are the only types of horse aside from an Argentine breed that 'Tolt'- a type of gait between a trot and run, making them very efficient for long distance travel with big Viking people on their backs. We were able to ride on our last day...but they made us wear space suits...but we got caught in a small blizzard so they did keep us warm!

We will post more pictures to sum up our trip, so stay posted

Return to the smokey bay

Today was the day everybody...Today was the day that Meryl and i have been waiting for...Today Meryl and I ate the national food of Iceland, the Icelandic Hotdog! And wow did it blow our socks off! In all honesty, they blew american hotdogs out of the water, very very delicious and quite affordable all things considered. You can buys hotdogs all over town, but we scoped this place out...a long line of local Icelanders, decent prices and a great advertising campaign drew us in. yumm.
Also we visited the Saga viking museum, the mid-atlantic continental rift and the location where the Viking officially converted to Christianity in 1003 Ad.


The sign for the Icelandic Hotdog stand.
"Do you feel lucky punk?...Well?...do ya?
Meryl lookin' good in chainmail
Oh my god! Is this the Mid-Atlantic Continental rift or the location of the Viking conversion to Christianity in 1003 AD? Amazingly...its the same place!

Are we in iceland or on the moon

The drive from southeast back to southwest went from blue skys to a whiteout blizzard.

The largest glacier in europe... is big

Captions coming soon...

Iceland in the off season

Lobster dinner with lobster springrolls....ummm

Forrest enjoying a cocktail and his viking book while wind and rain howl outside of out window (that faces the harbor).

I spotted my first Reindeer!!! We saw about 7 of them cruising the countryside.

Waterfalls flowing up instead of down, it was windy, very windy. The waterfall on the right sometimes made it to the ground.

Forrest rocking out to Bjork (icelandic musical artist) while driving across the masive outwash deltas below the Vatnajokull glacier.

Drowning in Hofn...

Well...its raining...its raining very hard...and its windy...and we can't see a damn thing.
But here is the good news: We arrived in Hofn (pronounced 'hup' like an unexpected hiccup). Hofn is the lobster capital of Iceland so although our small, plain hostel room cost about $100 USD for the night, tonight we will be splashing out and eating Lobster!
Other good news: we went into the liquor store and the same bottle of gin that we purchased in the duty free shop for $17 was $70 USD in the town...so we took the liberty of buying a lime. Currently we are staying dry in our Hostel room while 'wetting our wistle's' with gin & soda's!
Normally from town and throughout our drive today, we would have been able to see beautiful glaciers, green cliffs and mountain peaks....we mostly saw rain. haha
However! On the Chilean coast we saw South America's largest Glacier and today we viewed Europe's largest glacier, Vatnajokull!
An example of how windy today was is thus: we stopped to take a photo of a waterfall, the wind blew the water fall back up and over the cliff preventing the water from actually falling to the ground. We also witnessed a seagull who found it quite difficult to fly forward...diligent though he was, no matter how hard he flapped, he only made negative progress...